Thursday 2nd May

Last night we got picked up by mini-bus and taken to the Gillen Club which is a sort of the equivalent of an RSL.   We had a good meal and a drink surrounded by sport of all sorts on massive TV screens around the place.  We retired after an hilarious drive back to the caravan park listening to a discussion between a Kiwi passenger and our female Kiwi driver.

We got away from Alice Springs this morning about 1000 and filled up with diesel on the way out of town.

The weather is pretty grey this morning and it looks like rain but there is only enough to annoy the windscreen wipers although there are pools of water beside the road.   

We saw a sign that said Ti Tree Mango Farm, advertising ice cream, wine and cheesecake – we had to check this out!   The place was up for sale but it was difficult to see who might buy it?

It is like a local general store in a refrigerated container but they are also make their own ice cream, mango wine, which, as you might imagine, is very sweet and a port which was actually nice enough to warrant buying a bottle.   There are two girls working in the shop, one from Dublin and the other from Asia! We were informed by the Irish lass that 3 weeks ago not only were there flies but also mozzies and she was bitten from head to toe. She only has a week to do after being there 3 months, probably glad to move on. Don’t know what places in North Australia would do without these young people travelling on temporary work visas.

Since we were parked here we decided it was about time for lunch.

After lunch the wind, which had been helping our fuel consumption, died away but no wind is better than the  head wind we have had virtually all the way to Alice!

It’s about 120ks to our planned night stop and on the way is Barrow Creek, one of the telegraph stations that linked Adelaide to Darwin and Darwin to London at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

     The buildings are being renovated and look quite smart at the moment.    This must have been a very hard place to live in those days.   From L-R, front, back, well and the stables.

         

Tonight we’re stopping at the site of a WWII army base, an extremely large area with nothing left but a few concrete slabs which look about the right size for Nissan Huts and we can fit our rigs on these pads quite easily, plus they are nice and level. We had been watching the sky all day and expecting some rain which arrived with a vengeance an hour or so after we arrived.  Of course the slabs are surrounded by red dirt so it soon became pretty messy.   Nevertheless we managed to get together for a glass of wine before we felt a few more drops and decided to repair to our respective vans.    Apparently we had a real downpour just after we went to bed but Roger didn’t hear a thing!   It did a good job of cleaning the red dirt from the GCR off the rigs!

Friday 3rd May

This morning there was water everywhere but there was no problem getting under way and heading north again.   Nothing much to report today, morning tea was taken at the Devil’s Marbles Hotel at Waughchope.   Decaf cappuccino available and a jolly good one too.   We drank it in the dining room which we commented seemed quite upmarket compared with average roadhouse!   We surmised that this was probably the water hole for fly in fly out visitors to the Devil’s Marbles.   This would also explain the wine racks which contained some produce from pretty good wineries.   Roger attempted to buy a couple of bottles but it was not 1200, yet a few locals were already waiting outside for midday.   (As an aside if want to see pictures of this natural phenomena, look under our Winter 2014 posts).     though

We were impressed by how clean and tidy Tennant Creek looked and stopped here for fuel.    A few ks away is Mary Anne Dam our lunch venue and were amazed to see it virtually empty even though the ‘wet’ has barely finished! 

Our night stop is a couple of hundred metres further on up the Barkly Hwy at Forty One Mile Bore.

Saturday 4th May

Today is going to be a bit of hard work, we’re heading towards Cammoweal but we have strong headwinds and this is a bit of a pain because we’re crossing the ‘tablelands’ which is flat, very flat, open country.   To prove a point there are crosswind warning signs every 50ks or so!

When we stop for lunch we decide that we can get to Cammoweal at a respectable time, though it is a bit more driving than we really like to do in a day.   In light of the distance we have to travel afternoon tea at a stop called Avon Downs, where we had thought about night stopping but decided it was a good decision not to!   For some reason there is a police station here!

In the end we arrive at Cammoweal in good time.  B & D have raved about this place and rightly so, it is a really beautiful spot on a billabong on the Georgina River, which flows down the the channel country, into the Diamantia River and on to Lake Eyre.

It’s nearly dinner so we head to the pub in town for a very reasonable dinner.  One of the other diners there was Ernie Dingo.  Back at the billabong its cheese, biscuits and port time.

       The water lilies are yellow, purple and white and look really pretty in the morning sun.

These birds are Brolgas, looking like very large herons, they are extremely noisy.

We have decided that we will have to go east to Clonclurry before heading north, which is now thw shortest distance between two points, as it were!   If you look at the bright green line above Alice Springs and compare it with the purple one, you will see how many extra ks we’ve had to do because the Sandover Hwy was closed.    It would have been about 600 up the Sandover but we’ve done nearly 1000 to get here via the Stuart and the Barkly!   We going to stay here for another day, its a public holiday tomorrow and then go to Mt Isa for a bit of shopping.